Ben Affleck Asks Jennifer Lopez if She Forgives Him, Plus More Revelations From Her New Documentary
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Following the release of her album, This Is Me...Now, and the accompanying musical film, Jennifer Lopez has also released a documentary revealing a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of both projects. It was no simple feat, especially the film: A studio revoked a deal, she had to finance the $20 million endeavor herself, and she and her team struggled to book celebrity cameos from Taylor Swift to Jennifer Coolidge and Ariana Grande. On top of that, they dealt with budget constraints, malfunctioning conveyor belts, and the difficult task of choosing the right type of mud for a dance sequence.
Amid the frenzy of bringing Lopez’s big dream to life, she and husband Ben Affleck also get vulnerable about their decades-long love story, which inspired both the album and film after all. The couple look back at their breakup 20-plus years ago, the public nature of their relationship, and enduring harsh media scrutiny. During Lopez’s sit-down confessionals, it’s even revealed that Affleck is the one filming her interviews.
Below are some of the duo’s biggest revelations in The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which is now streaming on Prime Video.
Ben feels uneasy about making their private life public.
Early in the doc, Lopez reveals that she showed her musical collaborators a collection of letters that Affleck gave to her as a gift. “This book is a book that Ben gave me on our first Christmas back together, it is every letter and email that we wrote to each other from 20 years ago and today,” she says.
The cover of the thick binder says, handwritten, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told by Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, 2001-2021 and counting…” Lopez explains, “It became like our bible and we just left it there in the studio.”
Affleck, however, was surprised that their correspondences were made public. “I was like, you’ve been showing all the musicians all these letters? They were like, ‘yeah, we call you Pen Affleck,’” he recalls in the doc. “I did really find the beauty, and the poetry, and the irony in the fact that it’s the greatest love story never told, and if you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.”
He adds later that he had to adjust to the change. “But things that are private, I’ve always felt, are sacred and special because they’re private. So this was something of an adjustment for me.”
Jen didn’t think much of herself, but Ben changed that.
“What he said and what he saw in me, what he made me believe about myself, only comes from love. Because nobody else could make me see that about myself,” Lopez says, through tears, during a meeting with her team. “It’s very moving. I didn’t think much of myself and so the world didn’t think much of me. That lined up. [He was like,] ‘This is how it is. See it. Believe it.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’”
They initially broke up because they “crumbled under the pressure.”
“Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding,” Lopez explains to her team in one scene. “We had a big wedding planned, like 14 ushers and bridesmaids, and three days before, we just crumbled under the pressure. I think we all go along thinking like, I’m doing okay, I’ve been through these things. If you’re like me, you kind of shake it off and just do your thing, and fucking conquer the world.”
But she wasn’t able to shake this one off. In another scene, Lopez holds back tears as she thinks about her time apart from Affleck, post-breakup. “All those years [were] really hard, ‘cause I didn’t just feel like I lost the love of my life, I felt like I lost the best friend that I ever had,” she says. “And I could talk for so many years, and that was the hardest part.”
Ben reflects on Jen’s feeling neglected as a child and his former alcohol addiction.
Looking back on her childhood, Lopez reveals that she “felt very ignored by my dad” and that her mother was always “the center of attention,” so she got used to being around people who acted that way.
“Jen felt emotionally neglected as a child,” Ben says.
He continues, drawing parallels between her longing for approval and his own past struggles with alcoholism. “It’s a hard thing to look at somebody whose professional life is wildly successful and who on Instagram looks like they’re living the happiest life in the world, the thing you discover, like you do with alcohol, is there isn’t enough alcohol in all the liquor stores in the world to fill up that thing. In Jennifer’s case, I don’t think there’s enough followers or movies or records or any of that stuff...[part of you still feels] a longing and pain. Ultimately that’s the work that you gotta do on your own.”
Scrutiny was the “catalyst” for their split.
Affleck opens up about how he and Lopez have different boundaries with the public, and different relationships with the press and social media. But they’re learning to compromise with one another.
“When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was the amount of scrutiny around our private life,” he says. “I had a very firm sense of boundaries, initially, around the press. While Jen, I don’t think objected to it in the way I did, I very much did object to it. Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media.’ And then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like you’re gonna marry a boat captain and like, ‘Well I don’t like the water.’ We’re just two people with different approaches, trying to learn to compromise.”
He adds at the end of the doc, “And I don’t really love being in the making-of documentary about my personal life, which is why I’m so relieved. It seems like I might be in this [movie], but I’m not really. … I was worried for no reason. The movie wasn’t about me. It was about the ability to love yourself. And that love story is a lot fucking harder to find than Prince Charming.”
Ultimately, she forgives him.
At one point of the film, Affleck asks Lopez in an interview: “So I first read the script, it looked like the inciting incident that causes all this pain down the road is our breakup. And I thought, ‘Wow, nobody did anything wrong, it was mutual…’ I think for us to move on from that, we need to kind of forgive, forgive each other. Do you forgive me?”
Lopez smiles and doesn’t answer. But at the end of the film, the couple revisits the topic of forgiveness.
“I think I was angry at you for a long time. That heartbreak took both of us on a course to figuring ourselves out, to being better people,” she says.
“Do you think you’ve forgiven me all the way?” Ben asks.
“Yeah I think I’ve forgiven you all the way,” she says. “I think I need to forgive myself some things.”
Watch The Greatest Love Story Never Told
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